


Badness Levels and Family

by Leonawriter



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, also Lilo and Stitch references, based on the DLC golden ending concept art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 12:24:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16118387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: If you asked him ten years ago where he thought he'd be now, he would not have said 'sitting under the sun watching the Chosen King's son draw with crayons.'





	Badness Levels and Family

Ardyn was sat on the ground, under a bright blue sky, and there were clouds overhead - wispy little things that didn’t look like they could form a raindrop if they tried between them. Chatter could be heard a short distance away, and laughter.

“Here, see?” The little boy, not even ten years old, hardly even _eight_ , shoved a piece of paper in his face. He’d been using crayons, and the lack of a proper hard surface to steady the paper showed. “This is you.”

The child looked almost comically serious. Just like his father. He wondered if this is what the boy’s father had looked like, so young as this.

The drawing itself was simple, and more scribbles and filled-in stick figures than anything. A stick figure with red hair, wearing black. Or- no...?

He didn’t _think_  anyone would have told the children about even such recent history as that. Their parents had been wanting to wait for the right time, so that they were old enough to understand. And if they had been told, Ardyn’s fairly sure that the culprit would be... dealt with.

“That,” the young prince said, pointing a still-chubby finger at the black inside the lines, “is your badness level. It’s un- _unusually_ high for someone your size. Uncle Iggy even says you’re a ‘stick of a man.’ But it’s okay, we can work on it.”

_Oh._

He doesn’t know what’s brought _this_  on - perhaps the children are more perceptive than he’d expected, and they’d noticed the way people treated him? Or, perhaps, he still had a few bad habits.

“I suppose we can, can’t we,” Ardyn says instead. 

Noctis had resolved to give him this chance, after all. He and Lunafreya both. It was the least he could do to even just humour their children. 

The prince, meanwhile, nods resolutely, unaware of whatever was going through his uncle’s - distant uncle, but for the child there was no difference or importance to that - mind. 

“Yeah. I mean, ‘cause you’re family. And dad says that when it comes to family, no one gets left behind or forgotten. So, even when it looks _real bad_ , you can’t give up, okay?”

For a moment, Ardyn doesn’t think he can breathe. He can’t feel himself breathing, at least, even though he knows how strangulation and choking feel, and it’s neither one of those.

_No one gets left behind or forgotten._

He’d asked, once - in another life, almost - if he was going to be erased from history once more. He would have understood, if the answer had been _yes,_ because he had hurt them so, this king and his retinue. His brothers. He had _asked_  for this hatred, brought it upon himself.

He hadn’t exactly had a proper answer to that one, then. He’d let it slide, figuring that it likely didn’t matter, given that he was going to die - had been dying - for good that time, and wouldn’t see the future where he was consigned to the footnotes of only those far too interested in anomalies again.

He hadn’t realised just how much the answer had been _no, the opposite, you’re going to be remembered_ , until just now, even well after he had even been brought back to life, only this time without the scourge.

He puts on a smile for the young prince. He thinks it comes out a bit wonky, a bit wet.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m not very good at that, but I’ll do my best.”

He’d given up so many times before, after all. On himself. On his friends. On the gods. On his very country. It’s _easy_  to give up. It’s so, so much harder to hold onto hope, he’s found, even when it’s staring him in the face with blue eyes and tilting its head.

“It’s not perfect, but it’ll have to do.”


End file.
